Past events

Bill at Hay 2017

Friday, May 26th, 2017
Hay Festival20.30 THERE WAS A KNOCK AT THE DOOR - CAN MODERN FOLK TALES HELP TO UNDERSTAND THESE TROUBLED TIMES?
Bill will be joining writer and activist, Andrew Simms, and artist and playwright, Sarah Woods, to discuss whether - with the world as it is today - stories might make better sense of things than news reports.
Further information here

Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes

Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes

9th February 2012
Royal Geographical Society Regional Group, York

Over the past 20,000 years, the Earth has undergone an astonishing transformation from frigid wasteland to the temperate world upon which our civilization has grown and thrived. There is now a mass of evidence that during this most dynamic period in Earth history, as the ice sheets melted and colossal volumes of water were redistributed across the planet, the pressures acting on the solid Earth also underwent massive change. In response, the crust bounced and bent, rocking our world with a resurgence in volcanic activity, a proliferation of seismic shocks, and burgeoning giant landslides. The disturbing fact is that there are clear signs that human-induced climate change is waking the slumbering giant beneath our feet once again. We could be on track to bequeath to our children, and their children, not only a far hotter world, but also a more geologically dangerous one.

SEVEN YEARS TO SAVE THE PLANET?

30th October 2008
Science Oxford

The future of the Earth's climate looks bleak - new research points to higher temperatures, bigger storms, more floods and the drowning of coastal towns and cities across the planet. Prof Bill McGuire, head of Europe's leading academic hazard research centre, explains that if we are to stop it from happening we may have less than 10 years to do something about it.